Chapter 9 Hardness and Sharpness
Drawing on his past life's historical knowledge, Quan Yi thought it over and came up with a possible reason.
On the Douluo Continent, society is strictly hierarchical. Whether in terms of status or soul power level, it's extremely hard to change one's fate.
At the very top are the soul master clans. They possess powerful martial souls, and along with them, naturally higher innate soul power.
Their talent is already far above ordinary people, so these soul master families have no real need to improve their cultivation methods.
As for the lower-ranked soul masters, those born into commoner families—their level of education is too low, and their horizons are too narrow. They don't even think about making improvements.
Moreover, a soul master must break through level thirty before the age of twenty; otherwise, no matter how hard they try later, they can never overcome that bottleneck.
As a result, the entire soul master world has fallen into a trap of believing only in innate talent. No one bothers to research cultivation techniques.
But in this world, there must still be a few people who keep researching. And such people must meet certain conditions: first, they must have some educational background; second, they must have poor innate talent; otherwise, they'd have no reason to study this.
Finally, and most importantly, this person must not have resigned themselves to fate. Only someone who still carries unwillingness in their heart would do something no one else dares to do.
But Quan Yi was different. Although he had so-called talent, that wasn't a reason to stop improving.
Since he already knew improvements were possible, there was no reason not to try. It seemed he had to add another task to his plan.
As he pondered, Quan Yi felt his soul power complete one circulation through his body. But instead of sensing an increase, he felt the existence of some kind of wall.
Was this the so-called bottleneck?
Quan Yi slowly opened his eyes and said to Quan Yue, "Father, I've grasped meditation. I can start training in fist techniques now."
"Very good. Since you've mastered meditation, we can officially begin learning some fist techniques."
"Our Quan family's martial arts combine offense and defense into a unique style. Among them, the most important parts are the two sets of techniques I'm about to teach you. You could say the essence of our Quan family's martial arts lies in these two techniques."
"One is the defensive technique — Hardness (Gang). The other is the offensive technique — Sharpness (Jian)."
"Hardness gathers soul power in your hands to form a hard membrane, which can be used for both offense and defense."
"Sharpness condenses your soul power into spikes on your fists. When the spike pierces into the enemy, your soul power enters their body and causes internal damage."
Rather than calling them fist techniques, they seemed more like soul power control techniques.
Quan Yi brought up his doubt.
"Father, aren't these more like soul power control skills than fist techniques?"
"Haha, very observant. Strictly speaking, they really aren't fist techniques. But Hardness and Sharpness are the most important parts of the Quan family's martial arts. If you can learn Hardness and Sharpness in these two months, you'll have passed the test."
Quan Yue didn't explain much further. Although Quan Yi still had questions, Quan Yue had already begun his explanation, so Quan Yi focused and listened carefully.
The principles of Hardness and Sharpness were actually quite simple: control soul power and gather it into your hands.
Hardness requires condensing the soul power into a thin membrane, forming a tough defense on your hands.
Sharpness requires shaping the soul power into spikes so that when you punch, it can easily break through the opponent's surface defense and inject soul power into their body.
After finishing his explanation, Quan Yue demonstrated: black light emerged from his hands, quickly covering them completely.
Quan Yi immediately thought, "Isn't this like Armament Haki from One Piece?"
The blackened hands shone with a metallic luster, looking incredibly hard.
Then, Quan Yue's right fist slowly changed: the knuckles protruded, eventually forming sharp spikes.
After showing this, Quan Yue instructed Quan Yi: "Sharpness is an advanced move built on Hardness. You can practice Hardness first, then move on to Sharpness."
Quan Yi didn't hesitate and immediately began to train.
Only after starting did Quan Yi realize he had underestimated the difficulty of learning Hardness and Sharpness.
Although the principle was simple, it was very hard to actually do.
First, controlling soul power inside the body was easy, but once it left the body, it became much harder to control.
As soon as soul power leaves the body, it disperses quickly. Fixing it on the skin's surface was extremely difficult.
Also, to create a membrane strong enough, you had to condense more soul power. And the more soul power you used, the harder it became to control.
The soul power consumption was huge: each attempt used about one-tenth of his total soul power. So each day, Quan Yi could only practice a limited number of times, and much of his time had to be spent meditating to recover.
No wonder they practiced in the basement: it was a simulated environment for training the gauntlet martial soul, where soul power recovery was far faster than elsewhere.
Even though it was difficult, it didn't defeat Quan Yi. To complete the test in two months, he resolutely gave up sleep and replaced it with meditation.
After a week, Quan Yi managed to gather soul power on the surface of his skin and keep it there for a while.
Quan Yi's soul power was a dark red color; when it covered his hands, it looked like his fists were wrapped in molten lava—beautiful but full of dangerous heat.
However, the soul power membrane was still unstable and sometimes fluctuated. When that happened, its hardness decreased. But overall, everything was progressing in the right direction.
This progress had already greatly exceeded Quan Yue's expectations. Back then, it had taken Quan Yue half a year just to barely learn Hardness.
Having full innate soul power didn't help with soul power control; that required powerful mental strength.
Could it be that Quan Yi also had extraordinary mental strength?
What Quan Yue didn't know was that Quan Yi was a reincarnator. Although his physical age was only six, his soul's age was over twenty.
That meant he'd had more than ten years of extra time to develop mentally, so naturally, his mental strength was strong.
At this rate, Quan Yi might not even need two months; maybe just a month to fully master Hardness and Sharpness.
At this moment, Quan Yi didn't have time to notice Quan Yue's reaction; all his focus was on training.
While training Hardness and Sharpness didn't physically exhaust him, it put a huge mental burden on him. But over time, Quan Yi could feel that the strain was slowly easing.
At the time, Quan Yi didn't realize this meant his mental strength was actually increasing.
As his mental strength improved, Quan Yi's control over his soul power became more precise. Using the same amount of soul power, the membrane on his hands became thinner and more stable.
In the second week, Quan Yi fully mastered Hardness.
After that, learning Sharpness was even faster. After all, Sharpness was just forming spikes based on the already stable membrane.
On the twenty-eighth day of training, Quan Yi went to find Quan Yue.
"Father, I've mastered Hardness and Sharpness."
Quan Yue had already lost count of how many times he'd been surprised.
Through these weeks of observation, Quan Yue had come to understand Quan Yi better.
Quan Yi possessed a will of steel. Compared to that, even having full innate soul power seemed insignificant.
Quan Yue had once worried that Quan Yi might slack off after discovering his exceptional talent.
But he hadn't seen even a hint of laziness in Quan Yi.
Quan Yue put himself in Quan Yi's shoes and realized he could never do what Quan Yi had done: train relentlessly, without sleep or rest.
(The chapter ends)